Why the Tea Party Hates Occupy Wall Street

Bill Ayers is the human
wormhole linking those mythical dirty, un-American hippies of the
1960s to the Obama administration to the also-dirty socialists of
the rising #occupy movement. On October 13th, the conservative blog
American Thinker
giddily entertained the hypothetical of an Occupy Wall Street
movement that would “morph into something resembling the radical
factions of the late 1960s and 1970s”—when “it will not be just
Ayers and [spouse Bernardine] Dohrn with blood on their hands. It
will be their young protégé in the White House as well.”

For some, the stretch to make the 60s connection is done out of
ignorance. For others it is a way to unload on a new generation the
purported sins of the old. The whole mess came together on a recent
windy Saturday in Milwaukee, when both the #occupy movement and the
Tea Party picked up protest signs and took to the streets. Bill
Ayers was in town.

“Before I arrived, I could smell the stench of their unwashed
bodies.”—Scott Brooks, 2010 candidate for Minnesota state
legislature.

“These days a ‘progressive’ is someone who believes indoor
plumbing is a tool of oppression.”—James Taranto, Wall Street
Journal writer

“Who knew pubic lice would be so down with protesting the
banksters, too?!”—Andrew Breitbart, founder of
BigGovernment.com

What all of these conservative activists and thought leaders
have in common, besides a future at the Laugh Factory, is that they
were far too young to have experienced the 1960s protest
stereotypes they parrot. Taranto was born in 1966, Breitbart in
1969 and Erickson in 1975. The “dirty hippie” narrative of
protesters is one they have picked up through the Hollywood
myth-making machine (whose cultural influence they often decry).
Just how not new is this narrative? This weekend saw reports of
U.S. service members in Boston
being spit on by #occupy protesters. Spitting on returning
Vietnam troops was, of course, maybe the most lasting legacy of the
1960s protesters—a legacy comprehensively debunked a few years
ago.

As Jerry Lembcke
wrote in 2005 in The Boston Globe: “I found nothing.
No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on. What
I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men
were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from
Vietnam.” The proliferation of this urban legend, Lembcke argued,
“intimidates a new generation of activists now finding the courage
to resist Vietnam-type ventures in the 21st century.”

Not that the left isn’t also making this tragic comparison to
the past. “Is #OWS The Revolution The Beatles Were Singing About?
We think so,” fawned
Democracy inaction group MoveOn.org.

So while plugging analysis of the new #occupy movement into the
rubric of the 1960s is the only way conservatives seem to have of
explaining what’s going on, it’s not just them. Proving that few
pundits can think beyond the paint-by-number, ad-man Donny Deutsch
went on MSNBC and predicted that what “will happen” in the #occupy
movement is some Kent State “imagery.” (Deutsch was 12 on May 4,
1970, the day the National Guard opened fire on protesters at the
Ohio campus, killing four.)

And nowhere does the right’s spite for the dirty hippies of the
60s marry into its contempt for the modern left better than with
Chicago education professor William “Bill” Ayers.

Wisconsin’s MacIver Institute (a conservative propaganda
organization dolled up to look like a conventional news service)
called Ayers visit to Milwaukee on the same day as the Occupy
Milwaukee event “a
moment of synchronicity.” After linking Ayers to Obama to the
#occupy movement, and noting that “The left in Wisconsin has a lot
in common with Ayers and others who practice terrorism,” MacIver
reporter James Wigderson wrote, “So much of the current activism on
the political left is nostalgia for the 1960s without remembering
what really happened.”

“What really happened” is exactly what landed me at the “Protest
Ayers” event in Milwaukee.

“Professor Terror!” yelled one of the 40-odd conservatives
gathered to protest the appearance of Bill Ayers at the Stonefly
Brewery in Milwaukee’s slowly gentrifying Riverwest neighborhood.
Five bike police relaxed and flanked the scene. But around the
corner, out of sight, were six or seven more officers with a
paddywagon.

Organizer Sara Conrad told me she is “a writer for AOL-Patch”
and that she organized the event because “We don’t agree with
bringing a terrorist to Milwaukee.” When asked what specifically
Ayers did that was so horrible, Conrad said, “He was the founder of
the Weather Underground and was involved in killing police
officers. He was as much an anarchist as he was a Marxist.” But
what really upsets Conrad the most is that “He’s not repentant. He
has not disavowed the organization and has even said he may have to
use bombs again.”

(“Of course I did my due diligence before I organized this
event,” she said.)

“Jane Fonda loves you!” yelled someone from the Protest Ayers
group at the 30 or so people loitering around outside the
Brewery.

It would be an understandable mistake to think Fox News or The
Heritage Foundation or even anti-terrorism Sharia watchdog Pamela
Geller had been dogging Ayers since 2001 and immediately exposed
his connection to Obama when the Illinois Senator announced his
candidacy. But no, it was an early February 2008 London Daily
Mail piece by Hitchens.

No, the other one.

The right never gave two twigs about Bill Ayers. His importance
as a terrorist was marginal—until Christopher Hitchens’ brother
Peter came across the loose connection, asking, in his coverage of
the Obama campaign, “Can this possibly be the same William Ayers…
who used to plant bombs in the Seventies?” Peter answered himself:
“It wouldn’t be surprising. Those (like me) who know the left-wing
codes notice things about Obama that he is far more radical than he
would like us to know.” (The story was such an outrage that it took
Ben Smith at Politico two more weeks to write about it.)

But it gained steam. On April 16th, the “Ayers question” was put
before Obama at a Democratic candidate debate.

Overnight, the right’s narrative changed. Bill Ayers became the
man who pulled the strings to launch Obama’s political career from
his and his wife’s living room—a cozy Chicago living room in which
Ayers and his Weathermen (Weatherperson?) spouse spent their
down-time sipping tea, plotting to kill police officers and turn
schoolchildren into Communists.

Rightwing activists who had ignored years of opportunity to
vilify Ayers became experts in Weathermen history. Ayers’
admittance of setting bombs became an admittance to setting
particular bombs. (Ayers maintains that none of the bombs he ever
set did anything more than destroy property.) The bomb conspiracy
and rioting charges were dropped due to questionable
evidence-gathering methods. Though he was never even charged with
it, it’s now commonly accepted by the right that the conviction he
avoided was for murder. (Never mentioned is that prosecutors also
dropped charges for fear of revealing CIA secrets at trial.)

“He’s guilty as hell. He’s out on a technicality,” said Vince
Schmuki, who identified himself as part of Wisconsin Interests Now.
He was dressed in a Halloween costume that was half cop, half
jailbird and with a “Ayers, B” nametag. (Wisconsin Interests Now
led an effort in 2009 to recall Democratic Wisconsin Governor Jim
Doyle.)

Schmuki brought a boombox with him and was playing, rewinding,
and replaying tapes of himself reading various communist and
terrorist quotes and beliefs of Bill Ayers. Schmuki pointed to
those across the street: “They think that terrorism is
laughable.”

When it comes to terrorism, Schmuki sees a lot of it. In August,
Schmuki was at the Tea Party Express Wisconsin recall bus tour
where he compared the state’s recall campaigns to terrorism.
Schmuki
told Politico, “This is ground zero. You remember what the term
ground zero means? We have been attacked.”

Asked what he thinks of the comparisons between the Tea Party
and #occupy movements, Schmuki jumped. “That’s absolutely false,”
he said. The #occupy protests “are anarchists and communists.” For
Schmuki, the primary difference is that the #occupy protesters “are
paid to be there” while “the Tea Party, from the inception, never
had paid members. We’ve never had people who were paid to be at
events.”

Schmuki then mentioned the Coast Guard member in Boston being
spit upon. “Hippies recycled,” he said.

A particular regional curiosity about this “Protest Ayers” event
came when I noticed a note on its Facebook page. Event organizer
Sara Conrad had written that Ayers “founded and led an organization
that took credit for bombings that killed people…among those a
professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison who had the
misfortune of being in Sterling Hall when the Weather Underground’s
bomb went off.”

A day before Protest Ayers, Conrad went on local conservative
talk radio and explained to host Mark Belling why she had organized
the event to protest Ayers coming to Wisconsin, “a place where his
beloved organization set a bomb that murdered somebody.” Belling
said nothing.

At 3:43 am on August 24, 1970, a Ford Econoline filled with
2,000 pounds of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate exploded outside
Sterling Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The bomb injured several and caused millions of dollars in damage.
Found in the rubble, lying face down in twelve inches of water, was
33-year-old postdoctorate researcher and father of three, Robert
Fassnacht. The bomb targeted the military-funded Army Mathematics
Research Center (which after closing for just one day, resumed
work).

The four bombers are well known. All UW students, they included
Karleton Armstrong, Dwight Armstrong, David Fine and Leo Burt.
Three served three to seven years on prison. Burt remains in hiding to this day.
They called themselves the “New Year’s Gang.” And as far as anyone
knows, Ayers never met any of them.

So when I asked Conrad about her claims, on Facebook and on the
radio, that Ayers was responsible for the Sterling Hall bombing,
she told me, “You would have to ask him about that.”

Chicks, a member of the Tea Party Wisconsin 9/12 Project, had
come to protest Ayers as well. Recently, Chicks
modeled a pink dress (worn by a man who poured a beer on a
Republican state legislator) when the dress was auctioned on eBay
to raise funds for the GOP.

Of Ayers’ connection to the Sterling Hall bomb, Chicks said,
“His group was. I don’t know if he specifically was. It slays me
because he is killing Americans.”

Though Ayers connection to Sterling Hall is surely advanced by
the wishful ignorance of a large conservative group desperate to
believe Ayers’ unaccounted for years in the 1970s were spent
smuggling Obama into the United States from Kenya, liberal
Hollywood actually hasn’t helped. The 1988 Sidney Lumet film
Running on Empty melts the on-the-run lives of Ayers and his
wife with a crime based on the Sterling Hall bombing.

I found Wisconsin State Treasurer Kurt Schuller holding a sign
that had the quote “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we did not
do enough” along with a picture of Ayers. Schuller pointed out the
photo was “of him standing on an American flag.” Conrad reported
that local business AmeriSign & Graphics donated 55 full color
signs, including the ones with Ayers’ photo, which originally ran
in a 2001 Chicago Magazine profile.

“Ayers is no different than Osama bin Laden. He was the leader
of a terrorist organization. Bill Ayers sent out his minions to
kill people for his cause. And bin Laden sent out his minions to
kill people for his cause. Sadly, bin Laden was just more
effective,” said Schuller.

A long pause ensued as I thought of a follow-up question more
professional than, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaa?”

Schuller looked over the protesters on both sides, and said, “I
lived the history these people were never taught.”

“That’s a good one,” said a nearby protester.

Born in 1955, Schuller was 14 in 1969.

Schuller, who openly identifies as a member of the Tea Party,
also bristled at any comparisons between Tea Partiers and the
#occupy movement. “That’s no movement,” he said. “It’s a bunch of
people getting together with no aim, no cohesion. There is no
comparison. It’s laughable.”

What’s more, Schuller does not understand what the protesters
are upset about. “Wall Street is one of Obama’s biggest
fundraisers. Wall Street doesn’t reach into people’s pocket and
take the money,” he said.

Sebring, who also came out to protest “an unrepentant, admitted
terrorist,” he said, is part of the Tea Party. When I asked Sebring
how he feels about the Sterling Hall bombing being wrongly
associated with Ayers, the candidate said, “I don’t know that’s
true.” After a pause, he added, “It’s accepted knowledge that he’s
admitted involvement.”

During the entire afternoon I did not speak with one member of
the 50 or so Protest Ayers group who admitted that Ayers was known
not to be involved with Sterling Hall.

“Cop killer!” is a favorite taunt of the protesters anytime the
energy gets low. Ayers’ involvement in the February, 1970 bombing
of a San Francisco police precinct, which killed an officer, is a
favorite focus of conservatives. After Obama’s election, the group
America’s Survival launched a high profile push for Ayers’
indictment. (The outfit’s most recent allegation? “How
George Soros got Glenn Beck fired from Fox News.”) No even remotely
solid evidence exists connecting Ayers to that bombing.

Just because crackpots are sure Ayers did it doesn’t mean he
didn’t. Ayers has admitted to bombing Chicago’s Haymarket Police
Statue in anticipation of the Days of Rage protest, which Ayers
also helped lead. And there is evidence that suggests his
wife, at the very least, knew about the bombing.

And just because the Tea Party despises him doesn’t make
defending Ayers easy, or even necessary. By all accounts, the
professor did illegal and stupid, stupid things. That he never
served any jail time seems, from a practical 2000s standpoint,
unjust. It also doesn’t help that Ayers himself regularly comes
across like a gigantic prick.

Finally, one in the Protest Ayers group, looking for something
new that would resonate, yelled: “Bill Ayers is part of the one
percent!”

* * *

Around the demonstration, a local named Jeremy estimated that at
least half of the “counter-protesters” were just people from the
neighborhood who came out to see what the hubbub was all about.
“It’s exciting to have this energy here,” he said. Jeremy said he
did not know much about Ayers, adding, “But in Riverwest open minds
are welcome. Freedom of speech and all that.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this terrorist who killed
everyone. And is still trying to kill everyone. Name’s Bill Ayers.
He’s Obama’s best friend. Maybe you’ve heard of him,” said a man
wearing a “Xav” nametag. It’s the epitome of the sarcasm sincere
activists on the left bemoan. But Xav, who lives in the
neighborhood and said he was at the #occupy Milwaukee protest
earlier in the day, is a sincere fellow: Xav Leplae held
a hunger protest during the Madison labor protests earlier in
the year.

Another Wisconsinite who joined Milwaukee’s #occupy march, Ben
Foldy, agreed many have a cynical hesitancy about the movement.
“Milwaukee is clearly on the periphery of the movement,” Foldy
said, but he’s heartened by the diversity, “which for an event in
Milwaukee was noteworthy.”

Xav is encouraged by the Milwaukee’s wing of the movement, but
he’s not yet confident it has the kind of energy needed.

* * *

In any event, if these Wisconsin protesters were genuinely
interested in “remembering what really happened,” they would turn
their attention to Wisconsin’s own unrepentant murdering terrorist.
After serving seven years of a 23-year sentence, Karleton Armstrong
returned to Madison to open various food shops, including
a juice cart on the UW’s Library Mall. Today he can be found,
usually daily, just blocks from Sterling Hall. Like Ayers, even
years after the bombings, he has expressed less than remorse.

But then, Armstrong has never been in the same room as Barack
Obama (as far as we know).

A day after the event, one of the attendees would post on
the
Protest Ayers Facebook page [all sic]: “I was there protesting
Ayers and when U got there and saw the pro-Scott Walker and
‘Liberalism is a disease’ signs I wonder, what was the point of
people bringing those? We were there protesting Ayers not liberals
or anti Walker people… I’m pretty sure not all liberals think Ayers
is a swell guy… to go into peoples neighborhoods and insult them
probably isn’t the best method of trying to get a message
across..”

William Jenkins responded: “Not convinced you are playing with a
full deck. That liberal neighborhood shares political ideology in
line with Bill Ayers and you’re smoking crack if you think they
would be against violence in the name of that same brand of
politics.”

The thread was soon deleted.

Driving home from the Ayers protest, I got the day’s last, sad
dose of the reanimated “dirty hippy” narrative. During his October
15th radio broadcast (otherwise focused on Fannie Mae’s role in the
recession), CNBC host Larry Kudlow quipped of the #occupy
protesters: “They have the wrong narrative and the wrong sanitary
conditions.”

Born in 1947, Kudlow might actually know what he’s talking
about. Especially since he was a member of Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, The New Yorker even
profiled Kudlow as a standout SDS protest organizer. One of the
leaders of the SDS at that time? Terrorist Bill Ayers.

Abe Sauer can be reached
at abesauer at gmail dot com. He is also on Twitter. His book
How to be: NORTH DAKOTA is out next month.